In Brief
- Mosques in northern Gaza have announced Hamas’ military wing commander has died.
- US President Donald Trump said Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, was also killed.
Mosques across northern Gaza have announced the death of a key commander from Hamas’ military wing, one day after Israeli forces confirmed targeting the militant leader in a series of airstrikes.
Eyewitnesses reported that Gaza City mosques proclaimed Izz al-Din al-Haddad’s “martyrdom” during their broadcasts.
Hamas has not yet released a statement regarding the status of their military chief, leaving his fate unconfirmed by the group.
Israel, too, has been silent on whether al-Haddad was indeed killed in Friday’s aerial attacks.
On Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, alongside his defense minister, announced that al-Haddad had been specifically targeted. However, they stopped short of confirming if he was killed in the operation.
Israeli officials have accused al-Haddad of orchestrating the October 7, 2023, attacks carried out by Hamas militants, which have since triggered Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza.
Haddad, who became the group’s military chief in Gaza after Israel’s killing of Mohammad Sinwar last May, “was responsible for the murder, abduction, and harm inflicted on thousands of Israeli civilians (and) soldiers,” they said.
Israel and Hamas remain deadlocked in indirect talks to advance US President Donald Trump’s post-war plan for Gaza that is meant to end more than two years of fighting.
On Friday, medics in Gaza said at least seven people, including three women and a child, were killed and at least 50 injured in air strikes targeting an apartment and a vehicle. It is not clear if Haddad was one of the dead.
Israel has escalated its attacks in Gaza in the weeks since halting its joint bombing with the US in Iran, redirecting its fire back on the ruined Palestinian territory where the military says that Hamas fighters are tightening their grip.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, Israel and Lebanon have agreed to a 45-day extension of a ceasefire.
Lebanon has been swept into the wider war between the US and Israel on one side and Iran on the other. Following US-Israeli attacks on Iran on 28 February, the Iran-backed group Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel on 2 March.
Israel’s bombing campaign and ground invasion of Lebanon’s south displaced about 1.2 million people, before US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire last month following initial talks between the two countries’ ambassadors in the US.
ISIS’ Abu-Bilal al-Minuki also killed
On Friday, Trump said Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, was killed in an operation conducted by US and Nigerian forces.
It was a strike that Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu described as “a significant example of effective collaboration in the fight against terrorism.”
“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield. Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, thought he could hide in Africa, but little did he know we had sources who kept us informed on what he was doing,” Trump said on Truth Social, without disclosing the exact location of the operation.
In a statement posted on X, Tinubu said early assessments confirmed the elimination of al-Minuki — also known as Abu-Mainok — along with several of his lieutenants, during a strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin.
Tinubu said Nigerian forces worked closely with their US counterparts in what he called a daring joint operation that dealt a heavy blow to the ranks of the Islamic State.
Al-Minuki, a Nigerian national, was designated a “specially designated global terrorist” by the Biden administration in 2023, according to the US federal register.
Trump, who has previously accused Nigeria of failing to protect Christians from Islamist militants in the northwest, thanked the Nigerian government for its partnership in the operation.
Nigeria denies discriminating against any religion, saying its security forces target armed groups that attack both Christians and Muslims.
The US carried out strikes targeting Islamic State-linked militants in Nigeria in December. Since then, Washington has deployed drones and 200 troops to provide training and intelligence support to the Nigerian military against Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked insurgencies that are spreading across West Africa.
The US forces were operating in a strictly non-combat role, Nigerian military officials said earlier this year.
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